Thursday, March 10, 2005

Chrysler is in tune with nation's mood as it launches plan to promote anthem

By Laura Berman / The Detroit News

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O-o say can you see how times have quickly changed?

Last year, Chrysler Group CEO Dieter Zetsche played cool at the Detroit auto show, stepping out of a minivan wearing a streetwise fedora on his head. That was back in the days -- can you even remember them? -- when the Dodge Boys thought it might be cool to sponsor the Lingerie Bowl, a disastrous foray into Super Bowl counter-programming.

But today, Zetsche will display a keen sense of the current national zeitgeist when he kicks off the National Anthem Project -- an effort sponsored by Jeep and the National Association for Music Education -- that aims to put oomph into music education by emphasizing the singing of patriotic songs.

In this case, they're boosting the Star Spangled Banner, our much maligned and largely unsung national anthem, which is about to make a comeback given the current fascination with values symbolism.

From pledge of allegiance reinstatement to a move for the Ten Commandments in every town square and bare wall, God-and-country boilerplate is back in fashion.

"I think there's been a little bit of a mood swing," acknowledges Jason Vines, Chrysler's vice-president for corporate communications, who thinks the new sponsorship is a perfect fit for the Jeep brand - which an American World War II general once called "America's greatest weapon."

A recent Harris survey found that only 39 percent of Americans could recite the anthem's third line ("through the perilous fight"), while 61 percent don't know all of the words.

That ought not come as a surprise. There's an old story, probably apocryphal, that during World War II, the Americans used the anthem as a way to root out German spies: A captive who knew the words to the fourth verse would be shot on sight, it is said, since no real Americans know the words.

As one of those who can warble all the way to "and the home of the brave, play ball," it's not the singing that gives me pause, but the undercurrent to the trend. The sudden emphasis on displaying totems of faith in God and country -- from flying ribbons on cars to saying the pledge - is double-edged.

Vines, the Chrysler spokesman, calls the campaign "uncontroversial," and while that's true, that's what also ought to make us uneasy.

In insecure times, flag-waving is invariably resurgent. The related debates, about God in the Ten Commandments and the Pledge of Allegiance, are fixated on a similar idea: That Americans need credos, codes, and symbols to prove who we are.

And, more importantly, who we are not. It's no coincidence that during the last great flag-waving era of the 1950s, a Congressional committee sought to root out those deemed "un-American."

National anthem education is surely a smart and unobjectionable move for Jeep, with its Liberty model. Times have changed and, after a few lumbering moves, Chrysler is in sync.

This time, instead of using lingerie-clad models to sell trucks, the company's using another simple association to sell its vehicles. Skip the girls, go for God and country.

And you can hum it, too.

Laura Berman's column runs Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday in Metro. Reach her at (248) 647-7221 or lberman@detnews.com.